This year Anuga celebrated its 100th birthday. With 7,590 exhibitors and 170,000 visitors the world's largest trade fair for food and beverages was again a great success! Want to have an impression of the Belgian meat stand? Then have a look at the images and relive Anuga 2019.

From 4 to 9 October 2019, the world’s food sector will once again be welcomed to Cologne. VLAM will be there, together with 37 export companies of Belgian meat, dairy, poultry and rabbit, in three different pavilions. 

More meat is being eaten thanks to the growing world population and the rising available income. The recent global increase in meat consumption is even higher than that of fish.

The growing global demand is being offset by rising production and last year resulted in increased trade figures for every kind of meat.

In 2018, the global demand for meat was strong despite the increasing headwind in developed countries. Favourable feed prices as a result of a record cereal harvest were a boost for the producers of monogastric animals.

Despite the discovery of African Swine Fever in the wild boar population, the export volume of Belgian pork rose by 3% to 816,609 tonnes in 2018.

From 23 to 28 March, the Belgian king and queen made an official state visit to South Korea. Travelling along in their wake were six CEO's from pork producing companies.

As of 1 July, Filip Fontaine will become the general director of VLAM, Flanders’ Agricultural Marketing Board. 

The total meat consumption in Europe is rising. Pork and poultry collectively represent 80% of the total meat consumption and their share is growing. It is expected that meat consumption will still be rising slightly in 2018, mainly owing to poultry, and that it will then start to stagnate.

Public opinion is increasingly influenced by emotions and options rather than by objective facts, this also called post-truth. This leads to a trend towards sensation. Prof. Leroy researched the impact of this evolution on the image of meat, that became a pawn in the war between meat-lovers and the anti-meat lobby in the mass media.

On the 29th and 30th of August, Belgian Meat Office organized its 13th edition of the Round Table: a pr-event attended by 20 journalists from the European meat trade press. 

In 2017 Belgium exported 202,494 tonnes of beef or 10.3% more than in 2016. Also in the long term beef exports are rising: for the last 5 year the compound annual growth rate amounted to 6.8%. The vast majority of Belgian beef, namely 90%, goes to countries within the European Union. Exports within the Union rose by 8.6%, those to third countries by 27.5%.